Nigeria’s democracy: A dance of true freedom?
Nigeria celebrates its 19th year of the restoration of democracy after military rule that was characterised by hardship, corruption and the heavy-handed suppression of the press.
After 19 years and four democratic leaders, can we say the press is truly free? Are the voices of citizens being echoed by journalists heard and what is the nature of the responses or reactions from the current administration?
Nigeria ranks 119 out of 180 countries ranked in the 2018 World Press Freedom Index. The organisation responsible for compiling this index, the Reporters without Borders for Freedom of Information has described Nigeria as having a climate of permanent violence. Quoting the organisation:
In Nigeria, it is difficult to cover stories involving politics, terrorism, and financial embezzlement by the powerful. Journalists are often threatened, subjected to physical violence, or denied access to information by government officials, police, and sometimes the public itself. The all-powerful regional governors are often the media’s most determined persecutors and act with complete impunity. Africa’s most populous nation, Nigeria nonetheless has more than 100 independent media outlets. Online freedom was recently curbed by a cyber-crime law that penalizes bloggers in an arbitrary manner.
The report went on to say that there are concerns over the growing difficulties Nigerian journalists encountered when covering subjects with national security ramifications. In a country where every region is experiencing a form of violence ranging from Fulani herdsmen attacks across the country, Boko Haram insurgency to militancy and community clashes in the Niger Delta, it is imperative that the press and citizen journalists have the freedom to report without fear for safety.
Modernisation and the growing strength of the online press and citizen journalism is leaving government uneasy, and is attempting aggressive and sophisticated methods of stifling the voices of the press and citizens.
Online activities are being monitored by security agents of the government with the goal of shutting down opposing opinions. Twitter, the Nigerian citizens’ round table, is full of stories of disappearing tweets, while others have received threatening phone calls to delete posts with opinions that are contrary to those of the current administration.
In 2017 it was reported that 10 Nigerians were arrested by the government for online social media activity. These sort of reports emphasize the urgent need for intervention by civil society to help protect the interests and opinions of journalists and citizens.
Without the press, who serves as a watchdog for the activities of the government and informs and protects the opinions of citizens? The press has the important role of being the middlemen between the citizens and the government. It wields the sword of accountability and transparency in governance through its unbiased and freely opined story telling. When deprived of this fundamental human right, citizens are deprived and we are left with a democracy of over 180 million suppressed voices. Returning to old reporting tools is not a ready option as these reduce the effectiveness in the reach of investigative journalism as there is a shrinking audience and limited means of dissemination.
Digital tools are essential in the fight to protect the freedom of the press. Code for Africa through its subsidiary Code for Nigeria, is actively engaging newsrooms and journalists to adopt these tools as a means of protection for their online platforms through academy training workshops on digital security.
Code for Africa along with the African Networks of Centres for Investigative Reporting (ANCIR) and other partners, have worked together to develop such digital tools that can be utilised by journalists for their digital protection.
Two of such tools are Project Shield and afriLEAKS:
Created by Jigsaw, Project Shield is a multi-layer defence system to protect your site against DDoS (distributed denial of service) attacks. It offers free protection for news, human rights and election-monitoring sites. Project Shield uses technology called reverse proxy to protect websites from DDoS attacks by filtering out harmful traffic and only allowing safe traffic to go through.
A project by the African Network of Centres for Investigative Reporting (ANCIR), afriLEAKS provides a secure platform for whistleblowers to leak documents that are of interest to the public to newsrooms. With this platform, whistleblowers can also communicate with reporters without revealing your identity or contact information.
afriLEAKS is also considerate of newsrooms which may be resource-challenged by customising the technology and deployment models to suit these newsrooms.
Do you need help with digital security?
ANCIR is offering a helpline, technical resources, and sharing best practices with newsrooms and human rights activists for free. If you’d like to get access to these and more, sign up here to be considered for our digital security support.
Join Our Community Today!
Code for Nigeria is a non-partisan civic data and civic technology ‘change agent’.
We use civic technologies and open data to build digital democracies that afford citizens timely and unfettered access to actionable information that empowers them to make informed decisions and that strengthens civic engagement for improved public governance and accountability.
Follow Code for Nigeria on Twitter and Instagram and join our online community today.
About the Author
Andie is a Project Manager at Code for Nigeria. She is a Mandela Washington Fellow passionate about development and improving livelihoods in her country Nigeria. She’s social! — you can connect with her on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter.
